Book # 31 Great Expectations by Charles Dickens

For a brief period of time in the early nineties if you'd ask me what my favorite book was I would probably have said Great Expectations. While it isn't at the top of my list now, I discovered that I still really enjoyed it. After twenty years I also found that I remembered only the basic outline of the story.

The novel starts out with the main character, Pip, as a small child. He is being raised by his older sister and her husband Joe who is a blacksmith. One night while wondering around the marshes on the outskirts of their town he encounters the escaped convict, Magwitch. The convict threatens Pip if he doesn't help him get some food. Pip complies and tries to help Magwitch, but he is soon recaptured anyway. A few years later Pip is sent to spend time visiting with Miss Havisham and her adopted daughter Estella. Miss Havisham is an old shut-in and goes about her giant house in a tattered wedding dress. Pip quickly falls in love with Estella even though she is cold and condescending to him. A few years after this Pip learns that someone has decided to make him "a gentleman" and begins sending him money so that he can become educated and move into a higher social class. The person helping Pip remains anonymous, but Pip always assumes that it is Miss Havisham and that she plans to marry off Estella to him. After a couple of years making new friends and leaving his old ways behind, Pip finally learns who is behind the money. This revelation is a total shock to Pip.

Now I don't really want to give anything away so I'll just leave it at that. I'm curious if when I first read the book if I figured out who the secret person was before it was revealed. Knowing that all of Pip's assumptions are wrong made me feel bad for him. He really has no evidence that Miss Havisham is helping him and she takes advantage of this and lets him think whatever he wants.  The lesson to be learned here is probably that someone shouldn't make assumptions about the quality of a person based on their social standing.

Dickens' style took a little bit of getting used to. His writing doesn't really lend itself to quick reading, but rather the reader needs to take their time and really absorb all of the details that Dickens throws at the reader. I also liked how the title can be looked at in different ways. When Pip is told that he is to be "a gentleman" he thinks that he has 'great expectations' put on his future to make something of himself by his benefactor. But also at the same time Pip places 'great expectations' on what he expects from Miss Havisham and Estella. In the end both sets of expectations are not met.

The only odd thing is that Pip at one point discovers that the stories of two main characters that don't know each other intersect in  multiple ways... yet neither character learns about this and Pip does very little with the information. Also Pip learns who Estella's real mother is but never tells anyone about it.

Great Expectations stays in my top 50 and gets an A.